---
title: 'Flaherty, Day Three'
date: '2005-06-14T07:24:25-04:00'
permalink: /flaherty-day-three/
tags:
    - conferences
    - watching
---

A shorter day at documentary bootcamp yesterday; I only caught the beginning of the evening session, as I wanted to get home and relax a bit. The films are amazing, but the pace is intense, and I needed a bit more downtime.

Anyhow, yesterday’s bill of fare, as far as I made it:

> Monday, June 13, 9.00 am
> 
> — *Ssitkim – Talking to the Dead* (dir. Soon-Mi Yoo, 2004, 36 min)  
>   
> — *Exhumations and Inhumations in Guatemala* (dir. Emiliana Aguilar, 2001, 16 min)  
>   
> — *Chile, Obstinate Memory* (dir. Patricio Guzman, 1997, 35 min)
> 
> Monday, June 13, 2.00 pm
> 
> — *Suite for Freedom* (dirs. Caroline Leaf, Luc Perez, and Aleksandro Korejwo, 2005, 15 min)  
>   
> — *Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport* (dir. Mark Jonathan Harris, 2000, 122 min)

If there’s anything to be said of yesterday — a very weepy day in the theater — it’s that I think we’ve turned a corner, from unrelieved death and destruction, through exhuming the dead, to tales of escape and survival. (*Suite for Freedom* is a project of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.) I’m thinking — or maybe hoping — that we must be on an upswing. Last night’s crowd at the evening screening was much rowdier than they had been previously, which I attribute to the catharsis produced by the *Kindertransport* film, a far more traditional, mainstream, big-budget documentary than anything else we’ve seen. So I’m heading into today in a guardedly optimistic fashion, looking forward to seeing what’s next.